Old Stories – Melancholy Poems

Sad-eyed girl on a water lily

The rivers surged—first blood.

Your naked scent,

ripe red strawberries in June,

bread and wine on Primrose Hill.

You’ve disappeared again.

December—dead dreams

hanging on the Christmas tree

and the tired show still goes on.

But is it the same without Freddie?

I hear, along the way,

you’ve taken on another name or two.

And we know you love the sea,

you told the world with passion.

One day, I’ll come back.

Can you not see the yellow train,

rusty and out of breath, puffing up the hill?

We’ll walk your street again—

past that fork to the broken sign,

where the silence became a scream.

You’ve disappeared again.

Like then, we’ll sit in yesterday’s

old café with a Coke and two straws,

ice cubes warming up the air

and maybe—just maybe—if I peel the layers…

Part of the Old Stories cycle of poems

A few words about the poem…

The Rusted Sign and the Yellow Train: A Melancholy Poems Essay on Love, Loss, and Loneliness

Old Stories, part of the poet’s ongoing series Melancholy Poems, offers a lyrical meditation on the ache of vanished presence, the persistence of memory, and the strange companionship of absence. Saturated with sadness and quiet longing, this poem distills the essence of love and loss, tracing the contours of a relationship that haunts the speaker like a familiar ghost—never fully gone, never fully returned.

From the opening stanza, memory spills out in sensual detail: "your naked scent, / ripe red strawberries in June, / bread and wine on Primrose Hill." These lines evoke intimacy through taste, scent, and season, grounding the emotional tone in physical, almost Eucharistic ritual—food as memory, as communion, as yearning. The speaker remembers not through fact, but through sensation. And as quickly as this tender moment surfaces, it vanishes— “You’ve disappeared again.” The poem's first refrain lands like a heartbeat skipped, a theme set in motion that will cycle, unresolved.

The speaker moves through time like a pilgrim without a map—December now, and the holidays offer no comfort. Instead, they serve as a funereal stage for “dead dreams / hanging on the Christmas tree,” casting a grim inversion of festivity. This is not nostalgia, but a melancholic awareness that even tradition cannot warm the places absence has hollowed out. And in a clever and poignant turn, the speaker wonders “is it the same without Freddie?”—a subtle nod to Queen, to music that once made even sadness glorious. Now, only the tired show remains, going on without its voice.

Midway through, the poem becomes more than personal reflection—it becomes a letter, a reach across years. We hear whispers of transformation: the person once loved has “taken on another name or two,” an act that suggests not just reinvention, but escape. They are now a mythic figure—one who loves the sea, “told the world with passion,” someone who perhaps dissolved into the tides rather than confront what was left behind.

But still, the speaker waits. Or rather, returns. In one of the most delicate and powerful images of the piece, we’re offered “the yellow train, / rusty and out of breath, puffing up the hillside.” The vehicle of return is tired, aged, but it is trying. This train does not promise triumph—it brings weariness, maybe futility. Yet it climbs. This becomes the quiet centre of the poem’s emotional core: even hope in this world is exhausted, yet persistent.

What follows is a brief revisiting of shared geography: “that fork to the broken sign,” a place marked not by directions but by rupture. “Where the silence became a scream” is a moment of poetic crystallisation—what was left unsaid, too long restrained, finally cracked the air. The trauma is not spelled out, but its echo is everywhere.

The refrain returns— “You’ve disappeared again.” This line, repeated, doesn’t change in wording, but grows in weight. It’s not just about someone leaving—it’s about someone who can no longer be held onto, even in memory.

The final stanza invites a return to ritual—a quiet wish. They might again sit in “yesterday’s / old café,” a place that holds the past in its chairs and condensation-slicked glasses. The imagery of “a Coke and two straws” suggests intimacy and youth, preserved in amber. Yet even this memory, this possibility, is conditional: “maybe—just maybe—if I peel the layers…” The poem ends not with resolution, but with a hesitant touch toward revelation. The act of peeling—the slow work of uncovering, excavating, risking—is perhaps the only act of love left.

Old Stories explores the devastating softness of melancholy—how it lingers in gesture and setting, how it repeats like a refrain. The speaker carries the dual burdens of loneliness and recollection, never quite able to let go of what’s lost, nor fully reconnect with what was. The poem is not simply a lament for a person; it is a lament for time itself, for the stories that once seemed permanent but now flicker like the mirage they always were.

As a part of the Melancholy Poems sequence, this piece deepens the thematic terrain of the poet’s body of work, dwelling not in drama but in muted reverie, where love and loss are entwined like ghosts at a train station—never disembarking, always waiting for one more turn around the hill.